The Metropolitan Knoxville Airport Authority has a new chair, Knoxville businessman Eddie Mannis, as of July 1. He follows Knoxville attorney Howard Vogel. Brian Simmons was re-elected vice chair. Mannis was elected at the June board meeting. He also chairs the Zoo Knoxville board and is considered a potential candidate for Knoxville mayor in 2019. He was deputy to Mayor Madeline Rogero for a little under two years in her first mayoral term.

Mannis owns Prestige Cleaners. A current airport authority member, Gwen McKenzie, is candidate for City Council to replace Daniel Brown. If elected, she would be the first elected city official to serve on the airport authority board, unless it is determined by legal counsel that an elected city official is ineligible to serve on the airport board. She is considered one of the leading candidates for council in her district, which has 13 candidates.

Should Mannis run for and be elected mayor in 2019, he would face the same issue as McKenzie. Other potential candidates for city mayor are council members Marshall Stair and George Wallace, former vice mayor Joe Bailey and state Rep. Eddie Smith.

Another board member, Jeff W. Smith, is being pushed for one of the open seats on the TVA Board of Directors. That would be a presidential appointment subject to U.S. Senate confirmation. There are three vacancies with two more pending.

Bill Marrison, president of the airport authority, has his contract extended one year to the end of December 2019. Marrison is highly regarded and very able. The authority does not want to change leadership during the next two years. Vogel, the former chair, continues on the authority until July 2020, when the next mayor will determine whether to re-appoint him or name a new member.

State Rep. Jason Zachary has been mentioned as a GOP candidate for county mayor along with businessman Glenn Jacobs, County Commissioners Bob Thomas and Brad Anders. Sheriff J.J. Jones opted out of the contest next year.

Zachary, as does any state legislator, faces the handicap of not being able to raise campaign funds during the upcoming legislative session, which starts in January 2018 and runs through the May 1 GOP primary. He also would need to be in Nashville during the next legislative session at least three or four days a week, which would prevent him from campaigning across Knox County. The only way he could avoid this would be to resign his House seat, which is unlikely and would not be well received.

The other candidates do not face those restrictions. Zachary has only been elected in one-seventh of Knox County (the Farragut and west Knox County area).

Right now no one has emerged as the leading candidate.

Knoxville lost a wonderful and caring religious leader when Monsignor Xavier Mankel, 81, died last month. He was a priest for 56 years and a founding father of the Catholic Diocese here in East Tennessee. He will be missed by all who knew him.

General Sessions Judge Geoffrey Emery turns 69 today, July 5, and East Tennessee Foundation CEO Mike McClamrock is 53. Former City Councilman Gary Underwood is 61 on Thursday, July 6, and former president George W. Bush turns 71 the same day. Federal Judge Thomas Varlan, who was appointed by Bush, is 61 on July 8, and UT President Emeritus Joe Johnson is 84 on Sunday, July 9.

Underwood is the only member of City Council in the past 100 years to win a council primary on a write-in vote. He went on to defeat the then-vice mayor in the general election.

Seen June 26 having lunch at the Chop House in West Knoxville were state Sen. Becky Massey and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally. McNally represents part of Knox County in the state Senate, as does Massey.